How are they doing it? It starts with a genuine interest in the wellbeing of each person. It isn’t conceptual or superficial; it's embodied in the norms and behaviors of the teams and their leadership.
Organizational researchers call it the heliotropic effect, a term borrowed from botany, which refers to the tendency of living systems to lean towards positive energy, like the sun. In organizational behavior, it translates to teams that foster positive emotions, meaningful work, and strong connections, experiencing heightened levels of engagement, performance, and profitability. Heliotropism isn't just about creating a pleasant work environment; it's a strategic approach that directly impacts performance and effectiveness.
Research has shown that positive work practices and a sense of purpose lead to extraordinary outcomes. These practices create a virtuous cycle, enhancing resilience, fostering high-quality relationships, and leading to better performance. Leadership plays a pivotal role in this process. Leaders who embody emotional intelligence and empathy create an environment where people feel valued and connected. They inspire their teams to achieve high performance.
Consider your teams evolving and thriving with the natural efficiency of a sunflower reaching for the sun. Harnessing this inherent human tendency could be vital to supercharging your team’s growth.
Let's look at several successful practices. The triad of positive emotions, connections, and meaning is a practical blueprint derived from Martin Seligman's wellbeing research. To be sure, the triad is about something other than adding more tasks to an already overflowing plate. Instead, it's about integrating positive practices into the existing operations. For example, onboarding, work processes, leader development, and values and policies that guide the work are opportunities to embed practices that naturally support positive emotion, connection, and meaning, creating self-reinforcing cycles of growth.
How To Center Positive Emotions
When our client, a mission-based organization, had a team struggling with low morale and overwhelm, feeling like they were spinning their wheels – we helped them turn things around.
One intervention that proved incredibly valuable was implementing a simple weekly team meeting check-in question such as:
Starting with this type of question was a bit of a cultural shift from their typical focus on challenges and problems. But after instituting this weekly practice, the team noticed the energy changed, and they became more encouraging, optimistic, and upbeat. It was because each person began to see they were making a difference in the lives of others and how they were supporting each other. They celebrated positive stories and savored even small successes.
By shifting the focus, they didn’t deny that problems exist. Instead, they are recognizing strengths and wins.
Shining a light on what is working enables the team to build a reservoir of goodwill, team cohesion, and confidence in their ability to problem-solve.
The team was demonstrating the power of the first corner of the triad, positive emotions. It includes feelings like joy, gratitude, accomplishment, pride, or awe. Positive emotions broaden our perspective and build a sense of self-efficacy. From a neuroscience perspective, positive emotions stimulate the release of neurotransmitters and hormones such as dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin. Dopamine, often known as the "reward" neurotransmitter, plays a significant role in motivation and learning. It's released when we experience success or reach a goal, encouraging us to repeat that action or behavior. Serotonin boosts our mood and promotes feelings of contentment, while oxytocin, often called the "bonding hormone," promotes trust and strengthens social connections.
All of this leads to sustainable, high-performing teams that continue to deliver outcomes over the long term.
Fostering Positive Connections
The second corner of the triad is positive connections. These moments of interaction, however small, like gestures, tone of voice, or body postures, communicate that we value and relate to others.
For example, we were coaching a female executive in a male-dominated field. Notably, she was operating from the old mindset that extreme effort and pressure drive results, and she believed she needed to be assertive and a pacesetting leader to drive performance. After receiving 360 feedback, she realized she was seen differently by her peers than by her direct reports. Her peers described her as warm, empathic, and collaborative, while her direct reports experienced her as being intimidating, micro-managing, and sometimes condescending.
Because she managed a hectic schedule driven by tight deadlines, she often arrived late to her team meetings and jumped in head first to the business at hand. She thought that that was what the team needed: someone to ask the business-focused questions such as what we need to do, how can we get there, and how can I help?
She’d later realize that before she arrived at those meetings, her team members would casually banter, but they knew as soon as she joined that they would need to shift immediately to work-only mode. Because of her “get things done” style, she often missed those opportunities to connect on a human level, learn about how people were doing outside of work, and get to know her team members more authentically. In turn, her direct reports and team members felt that she was distant and inaccessible.
She had seen leading in the pacesetter mode as a strength until the 360 assessment helped her realize the negative impact on her team. They were afraid to speak up, didn’t feel empowered to make decisions, and had no room for open communication, making the interactions feel strained.
Throughout the coaching engagement, she worked to shift the way she interacted and connected with her direct reports to be more positive, accessible, and authentic. Initially, it was difficult; she had to get used to showing up with a different, more relational, curious, and warm mindset. She made an effort to join her team calls a few minutes early to prime herself for positive connections. She intentionally relaxed her tense facial muscles and stiff shoulders and even had Post-It reminders on her computer monitor reminding her to smile and breathe. Most importantly, she prioritized spending the first 30-60 seconds checking in with her team on a human level.
Over time, her team began to notice these shifts, and there was a definitive change in her team and how they related to her. She was building positive connections; the team became more supportive, talkative, and better at managing setbacks. This leader learned that positive connections are any team's lifeblood, fostering a sense of belonging and shared purpose.
And it turns out that positive connections help alleviate stress and anxiety. When we feel supported and understood, our body produces less cortisol, the stress hormone. High-stress levels get in the way of thinking and performing at our best. Our brains are wired for social connections, and our relationships significantly influence our neural responses.
Positive interactions can help regulate responses to threats or fear, making us more emotionally balanced and less reactive. This emotional stability improves decision-making. Our brain releases oxytocin, which helps build trust, encourage empathy, and strengthen social bonds. These qualities are crucial for cooperative behaviors and positive team dynamics.
Finding Meaning
The third corner of the triad is finding meaning in our work and life. Recently, we had the opportunity to facilitate a team experience where participants uncover more meaning in their work. The activity we used could be done in nearly any setting. We asked a simple question: “What do you enjoy doing, and what would you like to be doing more?”
The objective of the assignment was not about changing the role or job description but identifying ways to bring more of what you love into your routine. For example, a person who works as an engineer who feels isolated in his role but really enjoys connecting with his colleagues can bring more meaning into his work by finding time to meet up with his co-workers. Or an employee passionate about climate change decides to start an employee affinity group that looks for ways the business can innovate more sustainable business practices.
Employees can derive greater satisfaction and more profound purpose in their everyday routines by aligning work with what they find meaningful. Enabling tasks that leverage the individual's unique skills and strengths enhances their sense of accomplishment and efficacy.
For instance, Google became well known for instituting the 20% rule. "We encourage our employees, in addition to their regular projects, to spend 20 percent of their time working on what they think will most benefit Google," co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin wrote in 2004, before the company's IPO. "This empowers them to be more creative and innovative. Many of our significant advances have happened in this manner."
They were tapping into the principle that when employees find meaning and purpose in their work, it activates the brain's reward pathways releasing feel-good chemicals like dopamine which also plays a vital role in motivation. When people feel motivated, they show incredible determination and persistence and, as a result, innovate like the staff did when they used 20% time to develop the wildly successful product: Gmail.
To address burnout and increase thriving, shift your focus from simply avoiding negatives to actively fostering positive growth. Implementing a wellness program or promoting stress management techniques are necessary, but they only serve as band-aids on more profound issues. The paradigm shift starts by nurturing team practices rooted in the triad of positive emotions, connections, and meaning. Rather than pressing for relentless effort, we can use practices that forge positive energy, connections, and purpose. By employing these practices, we're building a healthier, engaged workforce and a more resilient and high-performing one.
When we turn our teams into thriving ecosystems, we create the conditions for employee wellbeing, heightened performance, engagement, and profitability. Thriving isn't a nice-to-have ideal; it's a strategic imperative in the modern workplace, a proven blueprint for success borrowed from human nature. The story of thriving teams teaches us that fostering positive environments that resonate with our intrinsic human tendencies is the key to unlocking extraordinary outcomes. We can harness the power of positivity and cultivate thriving teams just as plants grow naturally toward the sun.
